St. Patrick's Day, Green Hats, and a Weird TIL

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This morning, I noticed some people walking around with green hats. Which I think is perfectly fine, but the Chinese in me always thinks of our good-natured taboo of wearing green hats.

A lot of green hats. I sure hope that it's got nothing to do with marital strains. Credit

You see, the phrase "wearing a green hat" is a euphemism for "cuckold", or the deceived husband in an extramarital affair. So when we say in Chinese that Mr. Wang is wearing a green hat, what we really mean is that Mrs. Wang's been a bit naughty. As you might imagine, the association has made it increasingly difficult for modern Chinese to literally wear green hats. Hence, the presence of any green hats is made all the more noticeable in daily life.

Is This How LV Cornered the Chinese Market?

I found myself on the homepage of eBay when this item caught my eye.

Yup. That's a Louis Vuitton Thermos. Now, before you wonder, I own absolutely no Vuitton items of any sort. Unless you count a very obviously imitation wallet that I purchased in China many years back. It was a piece of crap and didn't last very long.

If this isn't how the luxury goods giant conquered the hearts (and wallets) of Chinese consumers, then this is surely how they'll do it going forward.

PSA: Eating these will not make you skinny.

... but NOT EATING these could.

Now at your local Costco and other fine stores: A brand that could only be formulated by the marketing team of the largest multinational food and beverage conglomerate in the world. Mmm. 150 calories that I didn't need in the first place....

And don't you just love that sexy, malnourished cartoon cow?

What's this?! Another product with the word "skinny"? non-GMO Popcorn? AND it's GF! Gee, I'm not even remotely attracted to popcorn, but hey, it's GUILT-FREE, right? Not exactly. But it's only 39 calories per cup of guilt. Never mind that measuring popcorn (i.e. mostly air) by the cup is perhaps a little disingenuous.

A Bit About Me and Japan

You might have noticed quite a bit of stuff on my blog relating to Japan. I wanted to give an explanation of why.

Me in Tokyo for the first time 1997. Yes, I was a fat kid.

For those of you who don't know me personally, I'm Chinese but also speak Japanese. I started taking classes during freshman year of college, and continued to study it for all four years. After spending part of every college summer in Japan, I also lived and worked in Tokyo for my first job out of school (eerily, I worked in one of the buildings you see in the background of the photo above). Thanks to the country's outrageously generous subsidy for foreigners via the national rail pass, I have now have visited more places in Japan than most Japanese people.

This is a short story of how I got started, and what it means to me today.

Badly Translated Engrish Menus

I think most of us have seen bad Engrish, right? This menu was sent over by a dear friend, was probably one of the single worst best examples of a total machine translation FAIL and an absolute Engrish GOLDMINE.

I'll have you know that "F*ck to fry the cow river" happens to be one of my favorite Canto dishes!

So what did the cold cow pick?

I'll have one The row of Spain, please.

Tell me about The carbon burns... is it hot?

The red double is pleased, and so will you.

Did they make you laugh? It's hilarious when you have absolutely no idea what is going on. It's even funnier if you know a bit of Chinese (especially Cantonese, in this case), English, AND have an understanding of how Google Translate works — or in this case, doesn't work.

I hope, however, that it doesn't put anyone off actually eating at this restaurant. If I screen out the translation, this actually looks like a pretty tasty menu. Any questions of what these items actually are meant to be translated as? Let me know and I'm happy to explain.

Special thanks to Ting at A Long Happy Life blog.

Killing Them (Not So) Softly: BART and Your Eardrums

For anyone who has taken the BART in San Francisco, and for anyone who takes it every day, you know that these trains are loud. Like, really loud. In fact, if I didn't have my in-ear headphones, I would have to cover my ears through some sections.

For my own sake, I needed to know whether taking the BART would affect my hearing over the long term.
(Image: Wikicommons)

But just how loud is it?

First Week in Review

This little blog project just made the one week mark, and what a week it has been!

In the first seven days of writing, AJ got 1,400 visits and over 3,000 page views. Sorry there isn't more content (yet), but I've got to start somewhere.

On the Finance channel, I wrote about how I got started with personal finance so long ago, and why you're better off investing in your own financial education instead of line an advisor's pockets.

On Food, I started the channel off with an introduction to what Chinese eat to celebrate the first full moon of the year. I then did a two-part investigative series on fake Japanese food — and I don't mean those plastic models you find behind the glass in front of Japanese restaurants.

On Tech, I explained my reasons for starting a tech channel, and how I hope to dig deep into the tech topics and the startup world. I then did the complete opposite and go into full-on Apple Watch mania, trying to put the wtf-ness of the gold watch pricing model into perspective.

Finally, on Travel, I started putting up a photo a day. Each photo carries an endearing memory of the place that I visited, and I just love being able to share that. Here's the first, from Miyazaki, Japan:

Happy Feet.

Thanks again for reading, and follow this blog on Facebook me on Google+ (for the latter, that'll be a grand total of none of you).